Wow, what a story. That is something which I haven't heard about at all, and assuming the disk you have is correct (ie it contains all necessary files etc...) then it sounds as if Red Hat doesn't like you!
. Only joking, some course of action could be a complete re-install. Did the installation process go okay? Any errors? Did you follow the book to install it. I haven't read that book itself but I don't really like the 'Dummies' books for any topic. Still mustn't judge a book by its title, or something like that.
As for recommending a book have a look at the thread in the newbie forum about that very topic. For information on the web you wont get a better resource than
http://www.linuxdoc.org for a list of How-To's and other such info.